


Veeti

by wavewright62



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Early years post-Rash, Father-Daughter Relationship, How I met your mother (but nothing to do with the TV show), Life Lessons, Other, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13190163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wavewright62/pseuds/wavewright62
Summary: Veeti's experiences roaming with a salvage gang in his younger years are valuable in his career, and he teaches the lessons he learnt to his daughter Taru.





	Veeti

**Author's Note:**

> This serves as my entry for the letter V in the SSSS Alphabet Challenge.

_The afternoon light from the dirty windows was already fading as the rain began to fall more heavily. A persistent drip, drip, drip could be heard elsewhere in the shop. _The roof is leaking, but at least the floor’s not all wet,_ fourteen-year-old Veeti thought as he quickly scanned the aisles for shelves with goods still on them. He’d finally given up on his waterproof boots a week or two ago; his feet had grown too much lately and the boots had become too painful to wear. He was wearing a holey pair of sneakers now and was on the lookout for new boots, for himself and for the others. He couldn’t believe his luck when he spied full shelves in the gloom of the rear of the shop. He moved quickly toward the rear, hissing to alert whoever else had come into the shop with him, but no answer came._

_Veeti hesitated; there were never supposed to be fewer than two in any scavenging party. That was one of the primary rules. The youth gang had only just started allowing the new boy Veeti to go on the scavenging raids, instead of staying behind with Lempi doing kitchen and domestic duties with the other little kids. He’d forgotten to check who was following him into the shop._ That was such a newbie move, _he cursed at himself under his breath,_ better get out now. _He would tell them about this shop and they would get a proper party together._

_He turned to go. He hadn’t noticed when the dripping stopped._

\--------------

“And that, Taru, is where I got _this_ scar.” Veeti held his arm out to his young daughter, who gently touched the pink puckered scar running along his forearm and up under the rolled-up sleeve, with one soft finger. “My first mistake: always send in at least two scouts into any new area, if you have them.” She nodded solemnly. “My second mistake that day was not listening carefully,” he continued, “on a reconnaissance, take note of any dripping you hear, especially if the surrounding area is dry.”

Taru lifted puzzled brown eyes to her father’s face. “Are they…are trolls wet?” She hadn’t seen a live troll yet, not up close.

“Not all.” He smiled down at her, but resisted the impulse to pick her up and cuddle her. Cuddles were still all right at home, but not during teaching time. “Every troll is different, but many prefer to stay wet, either in swampy conditions or in their own ah, bodily fluids.”

“Like snot?”

It cost Veeti some sisu not to laugh, as she looked so sincere. Then he recalled at least one troll who moved just like that. “Sometimes.”

“Ewwww.” Veeti had to agree with that assessment.

\------------------

_Seventeen-year-old Veeti strode down the street, keeping watch on the flank. The windows were all broken out of the shop windows here, which lessened the chances of them being used for nests. Still, there was no need to abandon caution; less likelihood was still greater than zero likelihood. None of them spoke, and they avoided crunching onto the remains of the glass strewn over the footpaths and streets._

_There was a faded penguin decorating the door of one shop. Veeti looked inside at the display case inside, set back from the broken window, a series of empty and dusty stainless steel pans. This had once been an ice cream shop. _Ice cream._ Veeti remembered agonising over the choices of flavours, and then he remembered strawberry ice cream, melting onto his fist faster than he could lick it from the cone. Yet another thing gone, taken from him by the Rash. He put his head down and started to stride past the shop and its unwanted memories._

  


_He was stopped short by Karl’s low clicking, the attention signal. Karl was a strange fellow; however, he was also very accurate as a scout, and therefore the gang forgave his strangeness. Karl was pointing at the shop just beyond the ice cream shop, where Veeti was about to walk. The lead sharpshooter brought her gun to her shoulder in readiness as Veeti stepped back into formation. She didn’t have to wait long for her target to manifest, as a tangle of teeth and rage burst from inside the shop._

\------------------

“Look after your mage squad,” Veeti pointed out to Taru, “a noita can make the difference between life and death. I’ve been saved countless times by them, and you’ve seen what your cousin Ensi can do.”

Taru nodded and stood on tiptoe to peer out over the ramparts which formed the fortifications around Keuruu. Veeti liked taking her with him as he made the rounds of the installations in the safe areas. She had voiced a desire to become a military strategist like he was, and he couldn’t be any prouder of her, although he couldn’t very well tell her that directly. She turned to him, wind making her cheeks ruddy, “Do you think if I believed in the gods enough, I might become a noita too, like cousin Ensi?”

“No.” He said it bluntly, but not unkindly. “They are chosen by a different standard, one we have no say in. Magical ability does seem to run in families, but not our side.”

\-----------------

_“Teach me that song.” Veeti sat down next to Karl at the campfire. Karl had his kantele out and had been picking out a tune. Karl frowned at him but said nothing. Veeti handed him a chocolate bar, part of that day’s lucky find. By some miracle, it wasn’t even all that damaged, just affected with whitish heat bloom. “No, come on, teach it to me,” he coaxed, “I really like the music.” Karl didn’t take the chocolate, so Veeti put it on the log next to him._

_Karl sighed. “You think it’s just music,_ entertainment, _like your stupid Eurovision or something. Leave me alone.” Veeti shrugged and stared into the fire. Karl put the kantele aside and took the chocolate bar. He opened it carefully, took a tiny bite and wrapped it again as carefully as he could, staring at the fire while he let the chocolate melt slowly in his mouth. After a long silence, Karl asked, “How much do you know about the Kalevala?”_

_“Nothing.”_

_“Hmmph,” Karl snorted. He put the rest of the chocolate in his shirt pocket and brought out the kantele again, but simply laid his hand across the strings. “You should learn.”_

_It was Veeti’s turn to snort. “I haven’t been to school since my family fled the Rash, what makes you think I want to go back now?” Veeti had missed his friends during the early days on the boat, but hadn’t really missed the boring days in the classroom. He’d been too busy learning how to survive in this new world, the world his parents couldn’t understand._

_“I don’t mean school,” Karl said irritably, “I mean learning about the gods, and magic.” He idly plucked the strings. “And runo.”_

_“God? We didn’t go to church or anything, except sometimes,” Veeti shifted on his seat. He wasn’t really prepared for having this kind of talk with Karl. He got up to get another stick for the fire, to give him a pretext to exit this conversation._

_Karl, however, was warming up to his subject. “No, you don’t understand. The_ gods, _the old gods, the gods of the forest and waters. They have granted me the ability to send the souls of the undead to Tuonela.”_

_Veeti paused. “Like that time when you sang to that reindeer beast?” He’d been by turns fascinated and repelled by the meticulous care Karl had taken in preparing the remains, more care than they had taken with the remains of the poor boy the beast had mauled. The rest of the gang wanted to leave the area immediately lest they encounter any more beasts like that one, but Karl had insisted on performing the rite. Veeti had been one of the detail left behind to escort Karl back to the next campsite._

_“Kallohonka,” Karl nodded curtly, “no, that’s a little different.” Veeti didn’t move, just watched the play of the fire on Karl’s pensive face for a moment. “When I sing the runo, I am communicating with the gods. They grant me… the ability to do magic.” He looked up at Veeti suddenly. “I don’t know why.” He looked vaguely frightened, Veeti noticed. “I see the spirits now, and hear the voices of the trapped ones.”_

_Veeti stepped back reflexively, “I thought you were immune, like the rest of us?” He’d seen too many of the Rashed clap their hands to their ears, complaining of the voices they heard._

_“No,_ I am, _I am, I mean…,” Karl looked back into the fire, the muscles in his jaw working, “they’re all around, all the time, but they leave when I tell them to. It’s …,” he broke off, shaking his head._

_Veeti shifted awkwardly. Then he remembered the last time he saw his little cousin Ensi, she had said something like that. He’d thought she was just repeating a fairy story, one of the stories Uncle Saku used to like to tell her. “Karl,” he said suddenly, “do you walk on water in your dreams?”_

_Karl’s head shot up, wide eyes staring at Veeti. “Yes,” he whispered warily, “why?”_

\----------------

Taru settled gingerly down into the chair, wincing as her leg flexed. She’d been released from the hospital ward and finally made it back to the cottage she shared with her father, during the few times they were both in Keuruu together. Her father had retired from active duty, but was still called in as a consultant from time to time. He was due back from Reykjavik any day now, hopefully he wouldn’t see her wounded like-

“Ui, Taru, what’s happened to you?” Veeti came out from the back bedroom, grey hair askew as though he’d been lying down. In truth, he spent much of his days napping lately.

“You’re back!” Taru had reflexively tried to jump out of her seat, and was now paying the price as pain shot out of her leg. “It’s nothing,” she hissed between her teeth as she wobbled.

“Don’t be daft, I can see you’re hurt.” Veeti waved his hands at her irritably. “Just tell me what happened.” Another two steps, then he fixed her with his good eye. “Any dead?”

Taru winced, more from the impact of her father’s gimlet eye than the wound on her thigh. “No, but one critical in hospital. Tiik might lose his eye, we don’t know yet.” Her father always demanded the truth from her, without embellishment.

“What were you trying to do?” Veeti brought the kettle over to the fire to boil, moving stiffly.

“We were doing a reconnaissance in Tampere,” Taru sighed, and braced herself for the inevitable outburst.

“Tampere! Your squad isn’t ready for Tampere yet,” Veeti growled, “I told you that! I barely made it out of Tampere alive myself!”

“That was thirty years ago, Father,” Taru began, but Veeti interrupted her.

“And just what was the strategist doing in the front lines?,” he demanded, poking a finger in her direction.

\----------------------

_Veeti held the map in front of him as he peered at the buildings on the banks of the river. At first glance, these houses looked like the Rash had passed them by. At any minute you could expect to see someone come out of the back of one of these houses, and go fire up the tidy sauna they had under the oaks in their backyard. However, a second glance revealed young birch trees sprouted in the middle of the meadow that had replaced the lawns of one house. Another one had an overgrown garden with untended roses blooming gaily amongst the overgrowth. A third had part of a wall missing out the side of the sauna. Another had a partially submerged boat tied by a rotting rope to its mooring, but the other moorings were all empty._

_As a large town, Tampere was considered off-limits, but this unit had been engaged to protect the work crews setting up a waterway to link the military base at Keuruu with the town of Pori on the seacoast. The intelligence maps needed updating, as some were simply pre-Rash road maps now 40 years out of date, and Veeti wanted to oversee that effort personally. He had been allowed some scouts and troops for a reconnaissance mission to work alongside the defense unit. Not far off, smoke rose from the vicinity of Nokia, the work of Swedish cleansers cooperating with the Finnish military to clear the banks of the new waterway._

_The scouts had reported seeing smoke from a small fire in this vicinity last night. As his young mage scout put it, “Ukko didn’t set that fire, and neither did the Swedes. Either one of them would have burnt it all to the ground.” There was troll activity between the scouts and the fire, however, and they couldn’t get closer to check it out more thoroughly._

_Veeti considered the report. Was it possible there was an encampment of survivors here? He’d managed to spend over fifteen years roving with his scavenging gang, so knew that in theory it could be done. But by the end of his sojourn, there was very little scavenging left, and too much fighting for dominance and territory within the gang. When Veeti gave himself up to a military patrol, most of the gang went with him to Keuruu. This might even be the remains of his old gang. Lennart hadn’t been stupid enough to enter a really big city like Tampere, had he? Lennart might be gone, what if it was an idiot like Luka in charge?_

_In any case, Tampere was next for razing, and they were duty bound to evacuate any non-infected citizens they might find. He peered at the serene houses on the bank, not unlike the house he’d left behind in Mikkeli all those years ago. A night sortie in an area known to have troll activity was not generally considered good strategy, but perhaps they could base themselves in one of these houses instead of coming back to the boat. When a day scout came back, Veeti brought her to the mission commander for debriefing._

_The scout had come reasonably close to the group, definitely a group of non-Rashed humans, although some of them wore masks; she estimated their number at maybe a dozen. She mentioned that their accent was similar to Veeti’s, although the descriptions she made of the people in the encampment didn’t sound familiar to him. He pointed out that they were likely to be younger children, or the non-immune, left behind to look after the camp while the crew went scavenging during the day. There was one older one, and she vaguely matched his memory of Lempi, but then she would be quite elderly by now._

_A decision was made that a small contingent would go to the encampment that very evening to apprise them of the impending situation, and collect them to safety if need be. “I should go,” Veeti volunteered, “because I may know them. Even if I don’t, I know how to speak to them.” It was irregular to send a strategist, let alone a middle-aged one, on a mission into a known troll zone, but the commander finally allowed it. Veeti instructed the contingent to take provisions and bedrolls, just in case they were compelled to spend the night with the band, and they set off._

_They hadn’t gone very far down the pleasant road where the tidy houses were, before the situation became a lot more untidy. As two trolls lumbered out of the trees into their path, their scout and guide unsheathed her puukko and gave chase to one. The other rounded onto Veeti and the medic, both of whom drew their knives as well to face it down. Veeti’s swipe at the troll’s skull missed its mark, sending Veeti off-balance and the momentum carried him down awkwardly. The troll jumped onto Veeti and he desperately thrust upward with his knife at the troll’s midsection, trying to get enough clearance to free his arm to wield his knife for the skull. A moment later, he managed to free his arm, but the offending skull was suddenly missing from the rest of the troll’s body, which rolled away limply as Veeti shoved the bloody carcass off himself. Veeti looked around, breathing heavily, but neither the scout nor the medic was to be seen._

_He rather stiffly started to rise, keeping his knife ready, when he noticed an unfamiliar pair of boots next to where his head had been. Scanning his eyes upward into the setting sun, he couldn’t help but notice the woman wearing the boots. She had stunning high cheekbones, long dark hair in a plait over one shoulder, a wool shirt he recognised from long experience as salvage from a high-end shop, and a puukko dripping gore over her left hand. She grimaced, “Who [expletive] are _you_ and what kind of [expletive] isn’t in camp before sunset?”_

_“I could ask you the same thing,” Veeti grunted as he stiffly rose with as much dignity as he could muster. “But thank you. I almost had it, but your assistance was much appreciated.” She smirked, but then crouched in readiness, puukko once again at the ready, at noise in the trees behind them. Veeti's scout and medic returned as he spoke, the medic wiping blood off his hands with a cloth. The woman looked warily but came out of her attack posture as Veeti greeted them._

_Introductions were made all around; Veeti learned his beautiful saviour’s name was Satu. Veeti made his case to the encampment that evening, and by the morning they agreed to evacuate, although it made for a tight squeeze on the boat._

\-------------------------

“So, what do _you_ think I should have done then?,” Taru asked Veeti.

Veeti realised he’d lost the thread of what she was saying while he was lost in reverie. He blinked once, twice, and a shadow of a grin touched the side of his mouth. “Ehh, you should ask your mother.”

They both sighed then, and Veeti held up his hand, “I know, I know, I miss her too. Sit. No, _sit!_ ” He pointed imperiously at Taru as she tried to hobble after him. “I’ll get some honey for the tea, it’ll help.”

**Author's Note:**

> The jumping around may be a little confusing, so here is a rough timeline:  
> The first vignette is from Year 4 or 5, and Taru is about 4 when he gives her the lesson he learnt that day.  
> The second vignette is from Year 7 or 8, and its lesson is told to Taru when she's about 10. The third vignette is from approximately the same time, a little later.  
> The last vignette is from the early 40s, and is remembered by Veeti when Taru's in her early 20s, Year 71 or so, well along in her own career.


End file.
